One step in my strategy (see recent post) was to create a new YouTube channel. A dedicated adeyjordan channel, with a brand and a selection of material to enjoy.
By Jove, I think I’ve done it!
The first thing was to create the channel itself, and I was fortunate to watch a webinar that stepped me through it. It’s not as if I needed a webinar – the point of having someone walk me through it was to get helpful hints, and I did. My channel is clean and a fresh visitor will get an immediate sense of what on offer. I like it, actually!
The banner image on the channel is … odd. I look like a slightly hunched old man, weighed down by the troubles of the world. And I’m okay with that. Not because I am actually weighed down – but because, well, sometimes I am, and I’m trying really hard to be okay with who and what I am: a bloke who’s been around a fair while, lives in a country town, looks from some angles like he’s gone a few rounds with a bus. I yam what I yam, and you either like the music or you don’t. Don’t spend time thinking about it – it’s not that deep.
Back to YouTube: I created six new videos for old songs – per the strategy – and decided that was enough. Time to tell the world. Okay, maybe not the world. Maybe just my friends. On Facebook. I have a few hundred of those!
Facebook is strange, I don’t have to tell you. You post stuff and only people who’ve recently read your posts or interacted with you get to see what you write. Nevermind, I’m going to be doing this for a while. My idea at this point is to have a non-zero subscriber count – and I’ve done that. I have THIRTEEN subscribers, 12 hours after posting on Facebook. Yeah, yeah, small potatoes … but to me it’s HUGE.
I was incredibly fortunate in my timing, I have to say. To promote a YouTube channel is hard without a branded URL. You need to be able to tell people “hey, pop over to my YouTube channel” and tell them the URL. If your channel can only be found with a string of letters and numbers, that’s not going to work. Catch-22: you need 100 subscribers to get a branded URL. But right when I needed it, YouTube introduced handles. For me that’s excellent because overnight I got a branded URL with zero subscribers. And it’s not bad! https://YouTube.com/@adeyjordan. The “at” symbol is the tradeoff, but I’m not fussed at all – it’s easy to say.
My kickoff was a simple walk and talk to camera thing, asking my friends to visit YouTube and subscribe. So simple, but it’s taken me a long while to get here. Now to keep delivering new entertainments and keep building the subscriber count so that when I finally put NEW NEW NEW music up there, I’ll have a ready-made audience to appreciate it.
Sorry, I’m feeling buzzy and enthused. It’s nice!